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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

News: SNS-HDR v1.3.8 to SNS-HDR v1.4.19

S

Sebastian Nibisz

New member
Hi,

I released version 1.3.8 of the SNS-HDR. The program can be downloaded from the project website.
I would like to know your opinions about the SNS-HDR.

image1.jpg


image2.jpg


image3.jpg

​
Regards,
Sebastian
 
Last edited by a moderator:
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Sebastian Nibisz said:
Hi,

I released version 1.3.8 of the SNS-HDR. The program can be downloaded from the project website.
I would like to know your opinions about the SNS-HDR
Click to expand...

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for the update. I'm a fan of SNS-HDR, it allows to produce a very natual looking image from an almost impossible dynamic range. It does so with very few artifacts, which is quite a challenge. It really speeds up my workflow for natural light scenes.

However, there are some things that would make it even better for professional use. The recent improvements for dealing with EXR files are much appreciated. Unfortunately the output colorspace is limited to sRGB. I'd really welcome the addition of a ProPhoto RGB colorspace as an option. For now, I currently need to import multiple TIFFs with ProPhoto RGB colorspace when I need to preserve some very saturated colors, which does allow to save a TIFF with that profile automatically embedded.

I would, from an ease of use perspective, also welcome a better highlight clipping indicator. Currently, when tweaking the overall Brightness/(mid-tone) Contrast controls, I have to watch the small histogram carefully and estimate if, and how much of the highlights get saturated in the highest histogram bin. This takes up time to optimize, especially because there is no eyedropper tool to measure the RGB brightness in the image itself. There are several possible warning levels that could be used, with increasing impact on performance.

The simplest clipping indicator would be an indicator in the histogram that lights up when the highest brightness bin is used. It would be even more useful if a threshold (e.g. percentage of pixels, or number of pixels) could be set before it activates, or even a readout of the number of pixels (which would allow to see what happens/changes when a slider is moved 1 notch). Even better would be if the number of R/G/B pixels that are clipped is shown. Even more useful would be if the actual pixels in the image would change color or blink, because that would show if the clipping is damaging important detail, or is just affecting featureless highlights.

Having better control over the highlight clipping will allow more room for all the other brightness tones to be redistributed, something that SNS-HDR already does very well. I know that the Highlight protection slider is effective in preventing clipping, but it also takes a bit of contrast out of the highlights which results in slightly less sparkling highlights. A little clipping is not necessarily bad, one just needs a bit more control on how much and what clipping is exactly going on.

Thanks for making such a great tool, even if it is only available in a Windows version. I don't know if anybody has tried running it virtually on a Mac with Parallels yet?

Cheers,
Bart
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Hi Sebastian
I agree (as usual!) with all remarks made by Bart.
But the the output colorspace is limited to sRGB and the fact taht it does not run on Mac let's me stick to Photomatix Pro which I use really often for all boat interiors and architecture works…
It's a pity as Bart and Cem already told me that in their opinion SNS-HDR is far better…

I don't have parallel, and can't use my bootcamp disk with my MacPro as it comes to conflict with my SSD boot drive… (both needs to be on Bay 1!)

Samples:
_45R9243_Chrisco_int.jpg


30_45R6984_Chrisco.jpg
 
S

Sebastian Nibisz

New member
Bart_van_der_Wolf said:
However, there are some things that would make it even better for professional use. The recent improvements for dealing with EXR files are much appreciated. Unfortunately the output colorspace is limited to sRGB. I'd really welcome the addition of a ProPhoto RGB colorspace as an option. For now, I currently need to import multiple TIFFs with ProPhoto RGB colorspace when I need to preserve some very saturated colors, which does allow to save a TIFF with that profile automatically embedded.
Click to expand...
I would add another color profiles, but I have not found the color profile files (icc) in the Internet that I could use in my program.


Bart_van_der_Wolf said:
I would, from an ease of use perspective, also welcome a better highlight clipping indicator. Currently, when tweaking the overall Brightness/(mid-tone) Contrast controls, I have to watch the small histogram carefully and estimate if, and how much of the highlights get saturated in the highest histogram bin. This takes up time to optimize, especially because there is no eyedropper tool to measure the RGB brightness in the image itself. There are several possible warning levels that could be used, with increasing impact on performance.

The simplest clipping indicator would be an indicator in the histogram that lights up when the highest brightness bin is used. It would be even more useful if a threshold (e.g. percentage of pixels, or number of pixels) could be set before it activates, or even a readout of the number of pixels (which would allow to see what happens/changes when a slider is moved 1 notch). Even better would be if the number of R/G/B pixels that are clipped is shown. Even more useful would be if the actual pixels in the image would change color or blink, because that would show if the clipping is damaging important detail, or is just affecting featureless highlights.
Click to expand...
This will be done in the next version.

Bart_van_der_Wolf said:
Having better control over the highlight clipping will allow more room for all the other brightness tones to be redistributed, something that SNS-HDR already does very well. I know that the Highlight protection slider is effective in preventing clipping, but it also takes a bit of contrast out of the highlights which results in slightly less sparkling highlights. A little clipping is not necessarily bad, one just needs a bit more control on how much and what clipping is exactly going on.
Click to expand...
I will try to improved it.

Regards,
Sebastian
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Sebastian Nibisz said:
I would add another color profiles, but I have not found the color profile files (icc) in the Internet that I could use in my program.
Click to expand...

Hi Sebastian,

This document describes the ProPhotoRGB colorspace profile, and has a link to the described profile version itself. The colorspace itself is quite simple, 3 coordinates for the primary colors, a White point coordinate, and gamma 1.8 (16-bit/channel files are preferred). The difficulty is of course how to map your internal color model to the XYZ coordinates which allow to convert to RGB.
Another very useful source, besides the www.color.org , for all these ICC matters is Bruce Lindbloom's website (under the Math chapter) which summarizes many colorspace conversions in both directions, and has some precalculated conversion matrices.

This will be done in the next version.
Click to expand...

Super! If done well, it can make a big difference with competing products.

I will try to improved it.
Click to expand...

Very much appreciated. I have a lot of confidence in your programming skills.

Thanks again,
Bart
 
S

Sebastian Nibisz

New member
Bart_van_der_Wolf said:
This document describes the ProPhotoRGB colorspace profile, and has a link to the described profile version itself. The colorspace itself is quite simple, 3 coordinates for the primary colors, a White point coordinate, and gamma 1.8 (16-bit/channel files are preferred). The difficulty is of course how to map your internal color model to the XYZ coordinates which allow to convert to RGB.
Another very useful source, besides the www.color.org , for all these ICC matters is Bruce Lindbloom's website (under the Math chapter) which summarizes many colorspace conversions in both directions, and has some precalculated conversion matrices.
Click to expand...

I will read it.

Thanks,
Sebastian
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
In using SNS-HDR or Photomatix Pro what's the minimum bracketing for a professional quality result? How much incremental gain does one get with adding more shots as I know some use up to 10 exposures for the blend?

To Nicolas,

Does the limitation to sRGB color space, at this time, mean that you wouldn't use SNS-HDR, (even if it runs perfectly under parallels and that was already installed in your Mac)?

I expect the big blocking issue is that you likely must deliver your images to the printer in Adobe RGB?

Asher
 
nicolas claris

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Hi Asher
sRGB kills blues and high saturated reds. no go for me…
I should use profoto, but for now stick to Adobe for my main workflow in 16 bits tifs.

I NEVER provide RGB (any of them) to printers, always cmyk according to their pref (swop or euro inks) I do prefer to handle myself the transition between Adobe RGB to cmyk.

Cmyk is also clipping blues and reds, but I don't want to cumulate adobe rgb (my capture color space) to sRGB transition and then to cmyk!
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Asher Kelman said:
In using SNS-HDR or Photomatix Pro what's the minimum bracketing for a professional quality result? How much incremental gain does one get with adding more shots as I know some use up to 10 exposures for the blend?
Click to expand...

Hi Asher,

That's a good question, not only from a usability standpoint (thinking of a 3 bracketed exposures limit on many cameras), but also from a quality standpoint. Unfortunately there is not a simple answer to satisfy both aspects.

One of the reasons is that SNS-HDR has been improved a lot since its early versions, and Sebastian has been (and still is) working on further improving it. In early versions it was best to not exceed 2/3rd of a stop between brackets, now (I just tested it) it can produce an almost artifact free merger of just 2 (Raw) images that are exposed 3 stops apart (say one exposed to the right, and one with 3 stops longer exposure time for the shadows).

I'm not saying I recommend it for best tonal quality, but it does work. When pushed even 1/3rd stop further, I can barely see some suspect areas in the test scene that I tried, so lets say a maximum of 3 stops between brackets. The test was based on direct Raw conversions (with the DCRaw engine) by SNS-HDR, using default inputs (de-ghosting and noise reduction). I have to do some more testing based on TIFFs as input, which is my normal workflow (which allows ProPhoto RGB, and other benefits from a quality Raw converter such as Capture One Pro), but the results look similar.

For (slightly, but noticeable) improved tonal quality, I'm currently confident with a 1.33 stop between brackets difference, just as I have used before in assembling HDR/EXR files. A complicating factor in this is that the quality of the lens also plays a role, and the actual Raw conversion workflow can also alter things. Different scenes also present different trade-offs and challenges, so I prefer to not push all the way to the limit when I don't need to.

Who knows, maybe a 2 stop bracketing distance will become a good compromise, and let's not forget that Raw files keep getting better as well. There are also many scenes that do not have such a huge dynamic range, but one merely wants better quality shadows to allow for more tonemapping there.

Cheers,
Bart
 
S

Sebastian Nibisz

New member
Asher Kelman said:
In using SNS-HDR or Photomatix Pro what's the minimum bracketing for a professional quality result?
Click to expand...
I recommend bratketing with 1EV step.

Nicolas Claris said:
sRGB kills blues and high saturated reds. no go for me…
Click to expand...
Limitation to sRGB only occurs if the RAW format.
For multiple exposure I recommend shooting in TIF format or converting RAW files to TIF format in dedicated RAW converter. In the case TIF and JPEG format the SNS-HDR works with color space embedded in the graphics file.

Regards,
Sebastian
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sebastian Nibisz said:
I recommend bratketing with 1EV step.


Limitation to sRGB only occurs if the RAW format.
For multiple exposure I recommend shooting in TIF format or converting RAW files to TIF format in dedicated RAW converter. In the case TIF and JPEG format the SNS-HDR works with color space embedded in the graphics file.

Regards,
Sebastian
Click to expand...

Thanks Sebastian,

A further question. In the following sequence of exposures, the bright light area on the wooden floor is chosen for the final image. What if we didn't want that to be so brightly blown out?

image3.jpg


Can you locally adjust the settings or do you need more brackets for such circumstances.

Asher
 
Doug Kerr

Doug Kerr

Well-known member
Hi, Asher,

Asher Kelman said:
A further question. In the following sequence of exposures, the bright light area on the wooden floor is chosen for the final image. What if we didn't want that to be so brightly blown out?

image3.jpg

Can you locally adjust the settings or do you need more brackets for such circumstances.
Click to expand...
I'm hampered here by not (yet) knowing more about the organization of SND-HDR, but my guess is that disposing of that artifact might require some work with the component files (in an image format, not raw) in an external editor before providing it to SNS-HDR.

This might even be best done with use of the Photoshop intelligent file functionality on one file (rather than struggling to recover the floor pattens from one of the less-exposed source files and match it into the more-exposed one).

I'm of course not fluent in doing any of that!

Best regards,

Doug
 
Last edited by a moderator:
S

Sebastian Nibisz

New member
Asher Kelman said:
A further question. In the following sequence of exposures, the bright light area on the wooden floor is chosen for the final image. What if we didn't want that to be so brightly blown out?
Click to expand...
The problem is the different temperature of light outside. Here should perform a local correction of the temperature. This will be possible in version 1.4 of the SNS-HDR.

Regards,
Sebastian
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Sebastian Nibisz said:
The problem is the different temperature of light outside. Here should perform a local correction of the temperature. This will be possible in version 1.4 of the SNS-HDR.
Click to expand...

Thanks. The good news continues ...
It might also be useful if SNS-HDR could support TIFFs with an alpha channel. That would also allow more control over things like anti-ghosting, and other local adjustments. But I know that's easier said than done.

@Asher, until then, it can be solved by making 2 output versions, and blend them as layers in Photoshop. SNS-HDR allows to set a whitepoint, and adjust the overall tonality towards Yellow or Blue. It also allows to store those settings as a preset, in case there are more images of the same location that need the same treatment. So, it's easy enough to produce 2 versions from the same source files.

As a quick and dirty solution in the current version, one can also desaturate Blue since most of the image has more Yellow tones. It's usually best to keep some of the differences in color balance intact, otherwise it might look unnatural.

Cheers,
Bart
 
Asher Kelman

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Cem, Bart, Nicolas and Ben,

I plan to get SNS-HDR soon for running under Parallels on my Mac. Hope you guys will write more of your impressions and favorite settings down for us to learn from. Sebastian has made a tool that's seems so valuable in that it gives such a clean natural look. Kudos.

If we can help promote it by adding clarity and good examples, then that's a great thank you for a job well done!

Asher
 
B

Ben Rubinstein

pro member
I'm hoping that once my new project gets underway I'll be snowed under with examples! :)

So far I'm liking the 'natural' preset with highlights pushed all the way over to the left, shadows all the way to the right, contrast a drop down and brightness left where it is. Using the local colour tool is a big help.

Few initial pointers: the program is not designed for my 1024x768 resolution screen, half the buttons, etc don't show up. The highlights tool really could be stronger. Please pretty please do something with the speed, how about an option for making a low rez file to run the previews/changes on and only apply a full rez tonemap if asked for.
 
B

Bart_van_der_Wolf

pro member
Ben Rubinstein said:
I'm hoping that once my new project gets underway I'll be snowed under with examples! :)

So far I'm liking the 'natural' preset with highlights pushed all the way over to the left, shadows all the way to the right, contrast a drop down and brightness left where it is. Using the local colour tool is a big help.
Click to expand...

Hi Ben,

You can use any of the presets and, after tweaking it to your liking, save it under a name of your own. When you use a clever name, it will appear at the top of the sorted list of names to choose from.


Few initial pointers: the program is not designed for my 1024x768 resolution screen, half the buttons, etc don't show up.
Click to expand...

That's useful feedback for Sebastian, although 1024x786 is a tad on the small size for an editing station by today's standards. Maybe something can be done to accomodate small screens.

The highlights tool really could be stronger.
Click to expand...

You have separate highlight controls, hidden under the small H buttons. One typically starts with adjusting overall brightness and contrast, to make the scene dynamic range fit in the histogram nicely. Just pushing down highlight clipping can take the sparkle out of an image though. There may be other ways to achieve your goal.

Please pretty please do something with the speed, how about an option for making a low rez file to run the previews/changes on and only apply a full rez tonemap if asked for.
Click to expand...

On opening a file, you can select a downsampling (size reduction) factor. That will produce a smaller version of the file. You can tweak settings on that file, and save the settings as a preset, and apply it later on the full size image (in batch mode it required). Of course you won't be able to predictably judge the microcontrast on a scaled down version, but the overall tonal reproduction should be 'similar' to the final full size version.

Cheers,
Bart
 
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